Essential Beauty
by Cavenagh Road
Summary: She was supposed to like the city, the grey and the persistent kitten-patter rain. She was supposed to like the dusty empty quiet of a tiny one-bedroom flat. She was not supposed to be sitting naked and cross-legged in an impersonal white bathtub." DGH
1. Default Chapter

Lay your sleeping head, my love,  
Human on my faithless arm;  
Time and fevers burn away  
Individual beauty from  
Thoughtful children, and the grave  
Proves the child ephermeral:  
But in my arms till break of day  
Let the living creature lie,  
Mortal, guilty, but to me  
The entirely beautiful.  
  
Soul and body have no bounds:  
To lovers as they lie upon  
Her tolerant enchanted slope  
In their ordinary swoon,  
Grave the vision Venus sends  
Of supernatural sympathy,  
Universal love and hope;  
While an abstract insight wakes  
Among the glaciers and the rocks  
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.  
  
Certainty, fidelity  
On the stroke of midnight pass  
Like vibrations of a bell,  
And fashionable madmen raise  
Their pedantic boring cry:   
Every farthing of the cost,  
All the dreadful cards foretell,   
Shall be paid, but not from this night  
Not a whisper, not a thought,  
Not a kiss nor look be lost.  
  
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:  
Let the winds of dawn that blow  
Softly round your dreaming head  
Such a day of sweetness show  
Eye and knocking heart may bless.  
Find the mortal world enough;  
Noons of dryness see you fed  
By the involuntary powers,  
Nights of insult let you pass  
Watched by every human love.  
  
_Lullaby_, W.H. Auden

Essential Beauty

**Beauty** /'bju:ti/ _n. _combination of quatlities that delights the sight or other senses or the mind; person or thing having this.

_Chapter One_

She was supposed to like the city, the grey and the persistent kitten-patter rain. She was supposed to like the dusty empty quiet of a tiny one-bedroom flat. She was not supposed to be sitting naked and cross-legged in an impersonal white bathtub, letting her freckled skin soak in the soapy water and become wrinkled, watching with a somewhat mindless fascination as water droplets trickled one by one by one from the water faucet, wondering what in the world possessed her to be there, just right there and then.

She had thought she had been sure that, having been engulfed by the noise of 12 Grimmauld Place, which was so polluted with memories and ghosts of memories and people that she had felt as if her breathing was getting heavier and more laboured, she would appreciate some comforting, healing silence. And so, just six hours ago, whilst having lunch with the rest of the Weasley family, and Harry, and Hermione, and Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Tonks, and Lupin, and Ernie MacMillan, and Luna Lovegood, and Michael Corner, and Cho Chang, and – she forgot who else, but she remembered at least a good twenty people – she had, in between the charmed flying projectiles and heated arguments about things she had forgotten what of, she had calmly placed down her fork and knife, and had calmly pushed back her chair, walking away from the table.

She had only taken five steps before Harry had noticed. Predictably, he had asked, "Gin – where're you going?"

She sincerely hated it when he called her that. Before she would have brushed it aside, taking it in her stride, smiling indulgently because it was so much _Harry _to forget such things, but this time – she had turned, and replied, weary, "I'll be going away for a while."

She had almost smirked – an old, almost forgotten bad habit, learned from studying someone she'd much rather forget as well – when Harry returned her remark with the blank look which so characterized him when he could not understand something (even though he was still beautiful – how could he not be with his dark green eyes and tousled hair, and his pale narrow features?). "Where?" he had blurted, but she had not answered. Instead she had turned to the twins, who were by now like quite a few of the others watching the exchange with either interest or curiosity. Or trepidation.

"Fred, George – mind if I borrow some money from the vault?" she ignored Fred's immediate shrewd look and George's look of concern, knowing that they wouldn't really mind her taking a few hundred Galleons for a while anyway. And before anyone could have said anything – she had Apparated.

She hadn't brought anything along with her – she'd simply Summoned them in her usual complacent manner half an hour ago. And she'd settled on the first decrepit grey-brown bricked apartment she had seen, after making sure it was in a tolerable condition. She had, after all, almost forgotten what it was to be pampered. And with the bad property rates due to the current situation, the owner had been obviously eager to rent out this ugly thing of an empty house.

And what, exactly, had she been doing for the three and half hours between receiving the keys to her first apartment and Summoning her things over?

She had simply stared into the stained ceiling, admiring the paled would-be gold embossed wallpaper, with as much aim and purpose as she was now staring at the water dripping off the rim of the water faucet.

Painfully, she realized, after trying so hard to run away, she had still come back to her favourite therapy – aimless procrastination – only, of course, this time she did not have the luxury of her fellow patient.

Closing her eyes, she remembers, how they used to stare, their backs on the floor and their bodies, fully clothed, next to each other, just watching the endless midnight sky, in the cold frigid winter wind, listening to each other's companionable silence.

She knew that no one else would ever be able to do the same thing as they did, not together and not fruitfully despite of how unfruitful it seemed to be.

Perhaps even then they had known the incredible weight of things and their own unbearable lightness of being. She was certainly feeling it now.

She had been sitting in the same position for a full half hour. Recklessly some part of her mind wished that he was here as well...Sighing, not wanting to let her thoughts float further into supposedly forbidden territory, she got up slowly, feeling the lukewarm water slide and kiss her skin reluctantly, and immediately feeling the cold draught of mid-autumn hitting her like a slap in the face. She did not want to think of him, especially not now that she had Harry --

_Or at least Harry had her_, she thought sardonically, then caught herself.

It was never as if they – if she could even qualify herself and Malfoy (there, she'd said it) as a collective pronoun – had been in any kind relationship.

She felt her lips quirk into a wry smile. No – all they had were silent studying sessions (after hissing rows where both parties declared that they had studied at that particular table all their lives in Hogwarts and weren't about to move because of the other), and then he had helped her (with a sneer and a condescendingly offered hankerchief) when she had almost broke down not being able to solve the infuriating Arithmacy question Professor Vector had set them, and then when she had been at her spot in the abandoned East Tower that night, which Tom had showed her, lying straight on the floor, and for some reason he had come there as well, and had lain there, as if he had always simply understood why she did so.

She hadn't said anything. She hadn't known what to say. And everytime she had returned – he would be there, waiting, or otherwise he would come a few minutes behind. And when she stopped going, she wondered whether, if she started going again, he would be there.

She had never dared look at him, when she had finally returned to find him already there, even though somewhere in an obscure backfile of her mind she wondered why she didn't do something, like any Weasley with their head screwed on the right way around would.

He had been the first to speak.

"Good game you played, today, against Hufflepuff."

She had responded without thinking, the words falling out of her mouth, and when they did she had known that she had sounded very much sarcastic. "You mean the one I lost?"

His voice, miraculously, had remained steady. "I meant the one where you caught the Snitch but that oaf of a brother of yours flailed about like a disjointed windmill, _thus _causing you to lose it."

She had remained quiet, not knowing exactly what to say because she had, firstly, been shocked by the veiled compliment (or was it a congratulation?), secondly, surprised that he had actually had the decency to analyse the entire situation with any semblance of a discerning eye, and, thirdly, because she could not help but secretly agree with him on Ron's count. Even if she loved her brother, and even if he were much, much more than an oaf.

"The quill you were using – how old is it?" had come his sudden obtrusive question into the midnight velvet silence.

"What – looking for new material to insult us with?" she had immediately returned. This time she did push upwards, turning sideways so she was glaring fully down at him.

He had simply stared at her, grey eyes dark and shaded in the reflection of the weak moonlight. And then, finally, he had said, "No...just...never mind."

And then he had got up, and in the moments that it had taken for her shock to sink in properly he had dusted himself off and had very nearly scarpered (if she could somehow attach such a verb to such a personality) down the rickety staircase of the East Tower.

She really, really wanted to laugh right now. She remembered – she remembered how, two weeks later, she had found an innocent new quill in her bookbag, and for some inexplicable reason she had suddenly remembered his strange question and his equally strange answer, and she had looked up, searching for him from across the room. And he had been writing something down on what looked like a piece of homework, an identical quill poised in his fingers, his grey eyes on Blaise Zabini, who was muttering something in his direction.

And how one habit, one question and its accompanying answer, one quill had all lead to everything that had been nothing.

They had spent each night religiously by each other's side, staring at everywhere else but at each other.

But she had begun to watch him in the day hours, staring at him, understanding each quirk, each manner of behaviour as he had gone about his breakfast, his lunch, his dinner, his homework, his Quidditch games, his conversations, his Prefect duties, his walking down the corridors, his very existence. And slowly, very slowly, he had somehow begun to become a real person to her – very far from a pleasant one, but she had become accustomed to his failings, accustomed to his weaknesses, and to his pride and to his insecurity. And slowly, very slowly, it had begun to feel as if he were someone she had known all her life, like he was the childhood friend she had never known, the one whom she could almost believe to be ashamed of because of what she knew about him and yet also the one whom she could almost believe she loved because he appeared devastatingly real to her. And because it felt as if he were identical to herself, because for some reason she kept seeing all of his own failings in herself.

Even then she should not have thought of him that way. She had had Michael, then; Michael with his excess of tenderness and apprehension. But then again she supposed she could justify herself, somehow: she had never thought it would have been anything more than just a very, very strange relationship which could not even quite hinge on the intimacy of friendship, much less romance.

When the first kiss had come, as his lips had come over hers just hours before the Department of Mysteries affair, she had been completely taken by surprise. But then the kiss had become velvet and metal and right and wrong and --

And then he had whispered, "Don't you leave Hogwarts tomorrow." And then he had left.

She remembered. The next day at Umbridge's office, she had remembered. And, just before she had Hexed him, he had spoken into her ear, softly so that no one else heard, "Don't leave Hogwarts."

Just twelve hours later, he would never speak or go near her again.

And now, four years on and out of Hogwarts, she was still feeling that sense of lost, as if there had been anything to lose in the first place.

So when she had seen him that morning, at her new job as an Unspeakable at the Department of Mysteries (ironically, she thought, then feeling her lips shift into a smirk), due to Fudge's clumsy attempts to promote more "transparency" within the Ministry, she had, for all of fifteen seconds which she had glimpsed his face in Croaker's brief introduction of the one other Unspeakable within the Department, been, at best, disconcerted.

At worst, she knew, she had looked disgustingly traumatized.

She reached for her old towel, rubbing herself dry with it with a ferocity that she had almost forgotten she'd had.

"Gin." She recognized that voice. In fact, from her fourth year, she had begun to recognize it not from familiarity over the years but because of how much the owner of this voice sounded so ironically identical to Draco Malfoy.

Harry Potter was sitting perched on the drape-covered loveseat, his knees bent and brought up so that his chin could position itself on folded arms which rested on them. He was staring at her, watching her without blinking, a cautiously non-judgemental look on his face. Exactly the one he must have learnt from her, four years ago, the summer after his fifth year.

Either irony was a particularly vicious beast, or her life was the celebration of William Shakespeare.

Four years ago, in a selfish attempt to forget Draco Malfoy and the emptiness that had been their non-relationship (and the bigger emptiness that had been the aftermath of their non-relationship), she had sat, at a small armchair night after night opposite an equally disturbed Harry. Either the lack of sleep must have got to his head, or – she really knew not what, because Harry, after a spell of such nights, had seemed to fall under the misconception that that had been her own original, unpretentious, valiant way of bringing him back from the edge of the precipice, and had consequently developed feelings for her.

That she had stayed up with him, night after night, had made him look at her in a different light, he had whispered, hoarsely, after his first stolen kiss when they had been sorting through Sirius's things in his old bedroom, by themselves. The whisper, and the narrow intensity of the green eyes had taken her, and --

She had not wanted to continue. After that mistake, she had told him firmly that _he_ had mistaken, and that he had misinterpreted everything.

But she had forgotten that this was Harry Potter, and that she, unwittingly, had helped in making him see there was more yet to fight for.

And so had begun the intense looks at breakfast, lunch and dinner, the extra tenderness and concern at every Quidditch practice and at every game, the brushes of skin as he passed her Pig or jam or the quill from Draco Malfoy which she had accidentally rolled over. The attempts at getting to know her friends, her likes, her dislikes – the simple attempts which she could not help but notice, because it felt like more than anyone had tried to give her.

So she had relented. And she had been happy. But that was before she had seen the bent blonde head before a long desk across from her, and now, watching Harry on the loveseat, with his insistence in believing in what he would believe, she suddenly felt as if he were still very much a boy, at his nineteen years, and for all the world that she was exactly eleven months younger it felt jarringly that she was very, very old. And used. And tired.

"Yes, Harry?" she mumbled, already knowing what he would say.

"Why did you sudenly just leave like that?" he asked, right on cue, and it caught her painfully how beautiful he was, sitting down there like that, with his messy black hair and dark green eyes and pale narrow features and long slender limbs. And it felt surrealistically tragic, the image before her – but why she felt this way she could not quite fathom.

"I'm tired, Harry," the words sounding foolish and selflish and idiotic even to herself. "I wanted --- I wanted some room to myself."

"You...you could always have some room with me, in Grimmauld Place, I mean -- " Harry struggled with his words, and from the way his hands are shaking (they always did so when he was nervous or anxious or upset) she suddenly very much wanted to be tried and charged as the Most Self-Centred Person in the World.

"Gin." Harry repeated again, as she continued to stand, unmoving, looking down on him. "I love you."

And she really could not say how much she felt like crying then, because the look in his eyes mirrored the one she so well remembered: the look in grey eyes she had not then understood.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

_And miles to go before I sleep..._

Harry, being the gentleman he was, had left the large bed to her whilst taking the couch for himself, sleep claiming him now that his mission was done, never realising that the seven metres of space between them did little to assuage her - what was it, really, that she was feeling? Assuage her what?

Ginny closed her eyes, her face inclined towards a small cusp in the cotton-clothed pillow that smelled _so much _of Harry, of the clean, shampooed smell of his messy black hair, of cut grass and of a tinge of sweat and tears and of starch and of memories overladen.

She couldn't really think of anything to be assuaged. She had no real sharp grief to mourn; and of the person she was thinking upon, she had no real memories to want to believe were real. And yet there was this undeniable itch inside her somewhere - inexplicable, unrelenting, and cloyingly difficult to articulate. And it was just an itch. Just a base itch. Such a base, constant itch.

She turned over, so that she was facing the low ceiling of the fourth room from the right of the second floor of 12 Grimmauld Place. The ceiling here was stained, as well, but it was not stained gold like withered pink roses, decadently beautiful, as the ceiling of her apartment; it was stained black and grey and green, spreading like tendrils of fronds over a peeling light cream coat of paint, like a fungus growth over a pallid cheek. She could not possibly stare at that, however mindlessly. She turned on her side again.

The bed creaked.

"Gin? Are you alright?" came Harry's sleep-drugged voice. Ever since he had come out of Hogwarts and taken residence at the Noble House of Black he had seemed to adopt, contrary to his weakness to sleep, a habit of waking up at the slightest sound.

"I'm alright, Harry," Ginny assured, and to mock her the itch seemed to grow even more insistent. Or perhaps it was simply an effect of lying.

"No, you're not," Harry returned, an obstinate quality creeping into his voice, and Ginny heard him pushing himself off the couch. "You only always fidget when you're lying, and you were just now kicking at the bedcovers."

She sometimes forgot that Harry was one of the few people who knew that she wasn't really that much of an adept liar. Sighing, she only buried her face into the cusp in the pillow, as she knew rather than heard Harry walk over.

"What is it?" she knew that his fingers hesitated before properly touching her. "Gin?"

"Nothing."

"Gin..." he was pulling her up now, he himself sitting on the bed. Harry seldom really touched her; he kissed her, more often, held her protectively, but his hands never really touched her in any way that was forceful, or even persuasive. "Why? What?"

Why, meaning, why she had left, since she had not wanted to say, and what, meaning what was it that was bothering her. She knew then that Harry very much guessed that they were really the same question, with the same answer.

Harry was wearing an old Quidditch team jersey, the scarlet darkening, the gold fading. The yellow Captain's armband around his left sleeve, which had been magically attached by McGonagall in Harry's sixth year, was still there, and it looked mustard in the dim moonlight streaming in from the large windows. His decisive, sharp collar bones protruded beneath the large jersey, which always seemed a bit too big for him, in that awkwardly endearing way that was _Harry_. He hadn't changed out of the old baggy jeans; they hung on to his narrow hips, the pocket edges frayed and torn, the loops either broken or about to break, because he had nervously and unconsciously threaded his fingers through them too many times.

Harry.

For some reason she was now fighting the compulsion to start crying into the old, familiar scarlet and gold jersey, which she knew exactly was stained at where Harry's third left rib would be, and which she had helped mend after a particularly violent match where a Bludger had come at Harry from behind and Ron, who had been nearby, had just managed to grab Harry by the collar, causing the Bludger to narrowly miss him. The collar had ripped, and Ginny, who had flown over immediately, had only stuffed it half-consciously into her pocket with her wand. When she had accidentally produced it that night, embarassed, and had weakly offered to help mend Harry's jersey, Harry had suddenly leaned forward towards her, and kissed her squarely on the lips, in full sight of the rest of Gryffindor House.

And it had suddenly become inevitable that they were to be a couple.

"Gin?" He was looking directly at her. Close. Lips light shell-pink, full. So very like --

Finally she bent her head towards him, letting her face slide into the crook of his neck, the white cold skin somehow so welcoming.

He rocked her, gently, not speaking anymore. Ginny remembered a scene of a year ago, before Tom had disappeared finally from the visages of her mind.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.

Blaise Zabini was born on the 22nd of July, 1980, at precisely 5.32 am. One week later, Draco Malfoy was born on the 29th July, 1980, three hours and twenty-four seconds after 5.32 am.

Blaise looked out of the window of his terrace house at Devon, staring out into the inky blackness of the early morning of the 22nd of July, 2000. He wondered, if his grandmother Matilda Zabini were still around, whether if he were about to find out anything of himself today.

When he had turned six, and had received a brand new broom, polished and clean, he had asked Matilda Zabini who had given it to him. She had replied that it was from his real father. When he had ventured to ask more - she had silenced him with a gnarled finger to his lips, and he knew he would have to wait, until she chose to say more.

Blaise had been a patient boy, even then. Patient, and well-behaved. Well-modulated.

Each consequent year she would offer a new bit of information, as the presents grew more and more extravagant, and took up more space within their terrace house at Devon. Stevens, their butler, had used to step around the pile around Blaise's chair at the table on the 22nd of July, serving breakfast, never unbending. Until Blaise's sixteenth birthday, when there were no more presents -

When he had turned seven: Your mother is my daughter, Bellatrix Black.

When he had turned eight: Your father is not the Lestrange idiot.

When he had turned nine: Everyone else in the family thinks that you are a Lestrange boy, only that the old crone that I am insisted on you having my surname.

When he had turned ten: Your mother was taken by her Master as soon as she gave birth to you. _I _named you.

When he had turned eleven: Your father is Lucius Malfoy. You have a half-brother, Draco Malfoy. I expect he is a week younger than you, but as everyone else in the family says I am an old crone and that might not be the most accurate of information.

But when he had first seen Draco Malfoy, the small boy as small as himself, with slick white-blonde hair and the same silver eyes, he had not been able to feel anything but a strangeness one feels when seeing someone one ought to know but doesn't. And he knew Draco Malfoy did not know the truth like he did, because he had looked directly at him as he had come towards the Slytherin table that first night, and when his same silver eyes had met his they had not stayed.

Blaise had wondered why no one else had noticed. Despite his own soot black hair, there was no scruple of difficulty in identifying that he had Draco Malfoy were related: the same small, delicate build, the same ivory skin, the same shell-pink mouth.

Finally, after a whole year and few months of exchanging, on occasion, classmates' pleasantries and polite courtesies, Blaise had sat down next to Draco Malfoy, tentatively, after his first Quidditch match. Neither of them had spoken the entire night, but Blaise had never felt more restless, more alive.

The two had carried on with such arrangements, every now and then. And as the novelty of these slowly but surely wore off, he had returned to ponder upon others' thoughts on their physical likeness...

Then he had grown older, and on his sixteenth birthday, over his French toast with honey, with Stevens hovering about discreetly (for the first time in ten years, without having to sidestep a good many presents), he had suddenly remembered how Snape's eyes used to glance over from him to Draco Malfoy, and how they would then glance quickly away.

It had only been then when he had realized that he had always been most inconvenient an existence.

He had already known Bellatrix Black had not tried to contact him after her escape.

That birthday, he had only glanced at Matilda Zabini, a morsel of French toast on his tongue; chewing slowly, not feeling any taste, he had wondered up to his room, and shut the door.

That would have been the longest he had ever slept in his life.

When he had awoken, about nine in the evening on his birthday, everything slowly came to him, in ebbs, and jerks, though truthfully now he cringed to think how everything had been staring him in the face all along. Snape never speaking to him, although he was one of his most gifted students; the senior years never looking at him with approval because Snape had never done so - they must have known that he had some defect beneath the veneer of a good old rich name and the smooth white features and the stellar abilities.

Suddenly he realized he had never been wanted.

Rather a frivolous concern, caring whether or not others wanted him; even so, at that time, he almost felt an inkling of what would have been resentment to Lucius Malfoy's real, _legitimate _son...

Draco Malfoy. If only _he _were Draco Malfoy instead of Blaise Zabini...

A month later, Lucius Malfoy had died, in an attempt to escape. Killed by an Auror. It had come as secondary news, really, that Narcissa Black had committed suicide upon finding out. Everyone had known of Narcissa's fervent dedication to Lucius.

Draco Malfoy had turned up at Blaise Zabini's doorstep, drenched from rain, breath heavy with a rich liquor.

"You bastard, Blaise _Malfoy,_" had been the only coherent words on his lips, before he had collapsed onto the gravel.

Blaise, shaking, had allowed Stevens bring Draco Malfoy in, and they lay him on a chaise lounge, under the eye of the strangely mute Matilda Zabini.

And the Aurors, the lawyers, the reporters, the social welfare officers had all come. Stevens had ushered in politely those necessary and relevant (the lawyers), coldly stepped aside for those who thought themselves necessary and relevant (the Aurors), ignored those who thought the entire business necessary and relevant to everyone else (the reporters), and calmly but firmly reassured those who thought their help would be necessary and relevant (the social welfare officers).

"...estate and money to be inherited by Draco Lucius Black Malfoy, and an annual allowance of one hundred and twenty thousand galleons to Blaise Black Malfoy, going by the name of Blaise Zabini and under the guardianship of Matilda Lorraine Prewett Zabini Black..."

Draco Malfoy had sat next to Blaise Zabini, silent. Opposite from them had been Matilda Zabini's favourite mirror, which stretched across the wall, framed by an ornate, heavy gold frame. The two boys had stared into it, silver eyes at silver.

After the will had been read out, Draco Malfoy had whispered, hoarsely, still staring into the mirror, "So, Blaise, you're really all I have left, aren't you?"

Blaise had lowered his eyes.

When Draco Malfoy had had his things over the next day, Matilda Zabini had left a note for Blaise Zabini, and had Apparated to her villa at the South of France.

_Blaise:_

_I never liked the Malfoys. _

_Remember to sleep proper hours. _

_-Your grandmother_

He had already known that she did not want him to follow after her. And so, sitting at the large rosewood table with the knowledge of Draco still sleeping, he had rung the bell. It hadn't been long before Stevens had arrived.

"Young Master Blaise."

He had, for once, lacked patience. "Tell me everything, Stevens."

A small, sad smile quirked at the tips of Stevens' thin mouth. "That would be betraying the confidence I had pledged myself to when I had first come under the Blacks' employ, Young Master."

"_I _am the master of this house, Stevens."

There had been a long moment, before Stevens had finally opened his mouth again to start. Blaise had motioned for him to take a seat, but he had refused.

"At least allow me the dignity of standing, _sir_, as you wrench from me mine integrity as a butler." Blaise had nodded, slowly, in consent.

"Madam Matilda had been most fond of your mother, sir. Took after her the most, you see. Dark beauty, and a sharpness about her. Precociously talented. Miss Andromeda and Miss Narcissa, in Madam's eyes, were important, but not _quite _so important next to Miss Bellatrix. Madam had wanted the best man for Miss Bellatrix. She hadn't taken to Mr Lucius Malfoy; nouveau riche, you see, compared to the Blacks and the Zabinis...had only come from France not two or three centuries ago. She could have forgiven Miss Narcissa for her affection for Mr Malfoy, but she sensed a similar thread of feeling for him as well from your mother, and she could not understand it, and could not allow it in her head. Madam had been adamant that Miss Bellatrix marry Mr Lestrange.

You must understand, it killed her appetite just to see Miss Bellatrix lock eyes with Mr Malfoy over Miss Narcissa's head. Madam was a sharp woman, and a determined one. She insisted Miss Bellatrix marry Mr Lestrange, and, in the end, the marriage did get through. Miss Bellatrix hardly visited, after that, until your birth. She had handed you to Madam personally. I remember."

Blaise had barely been able to stand the expressionless, professional face of Stevens at that moment, knowing the pity behind his tone. Finally, Stevens had excused himself, retiring to his pantry.

And now, almost four years on, Stevens was asleep at his pantry, whilst Blaise Zabini waited for his half-brother to return from work.

Tiredly, Blaise closed his eyes.

Draco Malfoy had not tasted alcohol in a long time. Too long, it seemed, as the swirl of taste and colour gurgled down his throat, leaving a residue of bittersweetness, clinging and lingering.

Eyes sweeping over his desk, he stopped to glare at an old discarded quill, as if everything were its fault.

Then he looked up and across from his desk, glaring at another desk, a smaller one, a newer one, as if everything were its fault.

Her fault.

It was the 22nd of July. Blaise would be waiting, he knew. He knew he was a prat to keep him waiting.

He had always hated that Blaise could make him feel a prat for anything.

But for some reason he did not want to meet anyone.

He wanted, very much, to sleep and sleep, and never wake up.

He reached for the wine glass again.

Harry Potter held the girl in his arms.

He remembered the first time he had done so. That time in the Chamber did not count -- she had been all of eleven, with long, untamed hair and ruined naivete, and he himself had been all of twelve, anxious and scared and dishevelled. No, the first time was when they had been in this same room.

The first time he had kissed her -- made the first move to kiss a girl.

In Harry Potter's mind, really, he could hardly ever remember kissing anyone besides Ginny Weasley, with her lemonade-tinged summer lips and wide gold eyes and darkened copper hair. Her face had been smudged with dirt from cleaning over her left cheek, and her hands had been stained with ink from homework. There had been a small red scratch across her collar bone, because she had been trying to talk to a grieving Buckbeak, who hadn't taken to anyone well.

He had known even before she had told him, that she didn't really stay all those nights with him that summer just to watch him bear it out. He had known that she must have had her own grieving to do, and he had known even then that it was not just for Sirius.

He knew that she thought he started liking -- loving -- her because of a misunderstanding, and that she sometimes felt afraid and upset with herself for that, because suddenly she would pull back and stare at him, as if gauging whether he really wanted her or not.

He knew that he hadn't quite yet become as important to her as she was to him. He knew that if she really wanted to, she could leave him. He knew that the reverse could not be possible.

He had wanted so much to hold her immediately after they had reached Grimmauld Place, but -- he could not deny it -- somehow he had felt afraid, not wanting to guess what it was, or who it was, that had caused her to want to run. So, in an effort to do _something _in the face of not knowing what to do at all, he had decided to pretend to sleep, and wait for her.

He knew that she had been restless for weeks now -- after the rogue Death-Eater attack on the Creeveys' apartment, she hadn't been eating properly, had turned and twisted more than ever in her sleep (he could hear her; she slept across from him in the opposite bedroom, after all), and woke up the next morning tender with bruises from knocking against the unforgiving rosewood bedframe. She would burst into fits of happiness, talking and joking with energy which could rival the twins', and then suddenly she would seem to deflate in front of him, weaving in and out of conversations, if she even bothered to keep up at all.

He felt as if he was losing her, and a sense of desperation was already taking over him.

It had almost been desperation the second time he had kissed her, in front of everyone in the common room.

She was sleeping now, finally. Her fingers were gripping to his shirt. They were smudged with ink.

Leaning back into the bed, Harry Potter closed his eyes, wishing for his own sleep.

It was 3.36 am in the morning, said Draco Malfoy's upside-down discarded watch, an old present from the late Narcissa Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy was currently balancing a wine glass between the tips of his fingers, despite of the person -- or the spectre -- that was currently right in front of his desk.

For the first time in a very long time, Draco Malfoy could not speak, and his shock his mouth only opened slightly.

"Draco," smiled the person (or spectre). In the moonlight it was difficult to tell -- but it really could only be the latter...

"Are you not glad to see me, son?" asked Lucius Malfoy.

In a terrace house in Devon, Blaise Zabini spotted a familiar eagle-owl coming towards him.

Silently the old messenger landed before him.

Blaise Zabini did not move. There was a letter, rolled neatly and tied immacutely with a dark green ribbon; a very old-fashioned way of packaging a letter, even by owl. There was a seal Blaise Zabini did not recognize on it. But the owl --

The old Malfoy owl. The one Lucius and Narcissa used to use to send messengers and presents to Draco in Hogwarts. The only one of the Malfoy owls that Draco had never managed to summon back.

Blaise Zabini felt his throat constrict with a sudden irrational fear. Before he could react, however, the owl had flown off, its dark form blending into the early morning sky. The letter was still across from him.

Tentatively, he picked it up. The seal was black, and he could make out the large intertwining letters 'O' and 'S'. An ornate snake was embossed in the background. _De omnibus dubitandum_. Beside the seal, in perfect cursive writing, were the words "To Blaise Malfoy".

He opened the letter.

_Dear Blaise, _

_Do not tell anyone. _

_You will be given an offer you cannot refuse, my sweet. _

_Yours sincerely, _

_Tom Marvolo Oigthierna Slytherin_

TBC

Thanks to darling reviewers Princess Phoenix Tears, DracoandGinny, hyacinthblue, seekerpeeker, steelcoatedheart, LoonyLoopyLuna, sappjody and mctrozzo. The bunch of you really made my day! :D


End file.
